Descriptive paragraphs to be sorted and analised.
Descriptive paragraphs to be sorted and analised. If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight ; For the gay beams of lightsome day, Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.- When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white ; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruined central tower ; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory ; When silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die ; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, Then go— but go alone the while— Then view St. David's ruined pile. - SIR WALTER SCOTT, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. ODE TO AUTUMN Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers : And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep • Steady thy laden head across a brook ; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. — JOHN KEATS. You may almost fancy that this spectral dwelling, given up to solitude and darkness, might be heard calling aloud for succor. Does it remain silent ? Do voices indeed issue from it ? What business has it on hand in this lonely place ? The mystery of the dark hours rests securely here. Its aspect is disquieting at noonday ; what must it be at midnight ? . . . . The dreamer asks himself — for dreams have their coherence . . . . what this house may be between the dusk of evening and the twilight of approaching dawn ? Has the vast supernatural world some relation with this deserted height, which sometimes compels it to arrest its movements here, and to descend and to become visi¬ble? Do the scattered elements of the spirit world whirl around it ? Does the impalpable take form and substance here ? Insoluble riddles ! A holy awe is in the very stones ; that dim twilight has surely relations with the infinite Unknown. — VICTOR HUGO, Toilers of the Sea. Lorenzo. The moon shines bright : in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. Jessica : In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew And saw the lion's shadow ere himself And ran dismay'd away. Lorenzo: In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love To come again to Carthage. Jessica: In such a night Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs That did renew old 2-Eson. -WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, Merchant of Venice, Act V., Sc. r. I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these. but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. -WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, As You Like It, Act IV., Sc. There are depths of sorrow that abstract the mind entirely from its fellowship with man. The forms which come and go within your room become confused and indistinct. They pass by, even touch you, but never really come near you. You are unapproachable ; they are inaccessible to you. The intensities of joy and de¬spair differ in this : in despair, we take cognizance of the world only as something dim and afar off ; we are insen¬sible to the things before our eyes ; we lose the feeling of our own existence. It is in vain, at such times, that we are flesh and blood ; crur consciousness of life is none the more real ; we are become, even to ourselves, noth¬ing but a dream. Mess Lethierry's gaze indicated that he had reached this state of absorption. —VicToR HuGo, Toilers of the Sea. As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores of apples ; some 'hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees ; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market ; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty pudding ; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the bee-hive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. —WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch-Book. Nun The following is a description of a picture by Edwin Landseer called "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner," which represents a dog lying by the coffin of its master, the old shepherd : The close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerless¬ness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indi¬cating how lonely has been the life—how unwatched the departure, of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep. --qcoHN RusiaN, Modern Painters, Vol. I. There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes ; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. -ALFRED TENNYSON, The Lotos-Eaters. Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension.—Words are something ; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long a-dying ; to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; . . . . to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself ; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime —these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest executed pieces of this empty instrumental music. 0 Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child ! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood, Land of my sires ! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band, That knits me to thy rugged strand ! Still, as I view each well-known scene, Think what is now, and what hath been, Seems as, to me, of all bereft, Sole friends thy woods and streams were left ; And thus I love them better still, Even in extremity of ill. - SIR WALTER SCOTT. Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work, and to do "chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters, rather than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such boy This boy, whose name was Solomon, before he died would rather split up kindling-wood for his mother than go a-fishing : the consequence was, that he was kept at splitting kindling-wood and such work most of the time, and grew a better and more useful boy day by day. Solomon would not disobey his parents and eat green apples,—not even when they were ripe enough to knock off with a stick,— but he had such a longing fo? them that he pined and passed away. If he had eaten the green apples he would have died of them, probably ; so that his example is a difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to get a moral from John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, nor half so dead. He was a farmer's boy, as Solomon was, but he did not take so much interest in the farm. If John could have had his way he would have discovered a cave full of diamonds, and lots of nail-kegs full of gold-pieces and Spanish dollars, with a pretty little girl living in the cave, and two beautifully caparisoned horses, upon which, taking the jewels and money, they would have ridden off together, he did not know where. John had got thus far in his studies, which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but were in reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of high and mighty adventure. He was a simple country boy, and did not know much about the world as it is, but he had one of his own imagination, in which he lived a good deal. —CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, Being a Boy. SUGGESTION. —